Fox in the henhouse: How Ajit Pawar cut the ground under NCP's feet

Sharad Pawar had largely left the management of the state party to his nephew, it is possible that Ajit created an empire that he thought was more loyal to him than his uncle

After the Maharashtra Assembly election results and the Shiv Sena’s rebellion against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), it became clear that no party was going to be able to form a government alone; parties acted post haste to corral their flock. The Congress lodged its MLAs in the luxury Buena Vista resort in Jaipur (reportedly the average daily tariff of villas done up in the ‘French and Rajasthani style’, with private swimming pools, was Rs 36,000). The Sena sequestered its MLAs at Hotel Rangsharda in a Mumbai suburb. The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), however, did nothing, assuming that after he